


The Young Master’s Brutal Idea Of An Endless Game

by ImmediatelyWriting



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Character Death, Child Ciel Phantomhive, Ciel Phantomhive is a Brat, Demon Sebastian Michaelis, Demonic Contracts (Kuroshitsuji), Far Future, Gen, Kuroshitsuji Post-Canon, Light Angst, Non-Canonical Character Death, Orphanage, POV Sebastian Michaelis, Past Character Death, Post-Canon, Reincarnated Ciel Phantomhive, Reincarnation, Time Skips, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29538996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImmediatelyWriting/pseuds/ImmediatelyWriting
Summary: "Stay with me."Those were his young master's last orders.Sebastian has to keep his promise to Ciel, even after death he has to stay with him and watch over him.But is an order still an order if the "new" young master doesn't remember a single thing about the contract, the orders or his demon butler anymore?
Comments: 8
Kudos: 13





	The Young Master’s Brutal Idea Of An Endless Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ihopethelightwillshineupon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ihopethelightwillshineupon/gifts).



> Hey There!
> 
> I hope you'll have a wonderful time reading this little Black Butler fic I wrote!  
> Though, I have to give a few small disclaimers!
> 
> First off, the characters used in this fanfiction aren't mine; they belong to the creators of Kuroshituji (Black Butler).   
> Secondly, for as far as I know, there's no spoilers in here. So everything in this fanfiction is completely non-canonically, even though Ciel and Sebastian's past is still the same as it is in the anime.   
> And last, but certainly not least, this is not a ship fanfiction! This is merely a post-canon and non-romantic story about a young bratty master and one hell of a butler.
> 
> Love, Noa <3

He was too young.

Just a child, too young to die. Even a demon like Sebastian thought it was tragic when the young master he'd taken care of for such a long time couldn't live a longer life.

He hadn't even turned eighteen when Sebastian has to carry him home, wounded and broken; there was no way of saving him anymore.

The young master didn't appear to be scared, or bothered, up to the very moment that a strong fatigue settled in and he realized his heart was going to stop beating sooner than later. That's when all colour drained from his face and he looked up at Sebastian.

Sebastian had never felt worried about the young master, because he knew this child was strong willed and wouldn't die so easily, but a spear right through the heart had done the trick. This was a wound neither demon nor angel could fix, and Ciel Phantomhive would be taken away by the reapers at last.

"S-Sebastian," the young master had whispered in a weak and almost inaudible voice. His bratty tone and ordering voice had disappeared now that Ciel stood face to face with death.

"Yes, young master?" Sebastian asked, lying Ciel down on the bed so he could at least lay comfortably in his last moments.

“M-may I give you one last order?” the young master even sounded unsure of himself.

Sebastian nodded; one last order wouldn’t be so bad, his contract with the brat would be ended in no time, and for some reason Sebastian felt like it was the right thing to do.

He couldn’t ignore his lord’s dying request after all.

"W-will you--" Ciel coughed. Thick red blood, internal bleeding wasn't something someone much stronger than the young master could survive, there was no way a scrawny child with asthma could survive blood in his lungs. "-- stay with me?"

Sebastian nodded and said, "Yes, for always, my lord."

As if it were a cue, the young master’s skin seemed to get paler, his eyes duller. It was as if he could die peacefully now that he knew Sebastian would watch over him as he slowly left this world.

When the faint sound of his heart’s beats eventually stopped after too much suffering, it felt like a spear going through Sebastian; ripping him apart from the inside. Was this what it felt like for his lord to die? Or could this be what grief felt like? Even though demons weren’t supposed to feel empathy towards anyone, especially humans, Sebastian still felt like he had lost his reason of existing.

Never had the death of a lord felt this painful to him, usually he’d just go on with his life, but now he felt like he couldn’t; as though he needed to take a moment to think before leaving this life behind.

Fatigue filled up his body when he looked at the young master’s emotionless face. And world around Sebastian seemed to fade slowly as if he were the one being sucked away from existence instead.

Like an animal going into hibernation, everything slowed down.

Everything blurred at the edges and his body started numbing, Sebastian stopped moving and even his thoughts turned into a dark nothingness as the world came to a jolting halt.

Until it starts turning at full pace again.

A new world seems to unfold before Sebastian’s eyes, like it does every time not long after his previous lord passed away. But this time it doesn’t feel like only a few seconds have gone by, and a new lord isn’t anywhere to be found; just an odd environment that looks nothing like the Phantomhive estate and more like a fictional illustration of the distant future.

“Out of the way!” a loud female voice shouts at Sebastian. “Do you want to get driven over by a car?”

Sebastian steps aside, his eyes following the woman who just dared to open her mouth to order him around. Who does this woman think she is anyway?

Everything seems so odd; the streets are almost empty, the women are dressed in men’s clothing and carriages not pulled by horses but instead are moving in a way that must be magic.

And next to normal-looking estates, big square houses and massive stores seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Sebastian knows for a fact that building so many buildings must’ve taken hundreds of years. So, what happened during that time? And why on earth can he not remember?

Sebastian stumbles back when one of the few carriages that roam the streets races past him so quickly he almost gets swept off his feet.

He bumps into someone, who glares at him. Her eyes filled with disgust, seeming rather bothered.

“Are you alright, sir?” she asks, her English accent not even sounding like a true British one anymore, but instead a strange mixture of accents. “You look very lost.”

Sebastian swallows; he _is_ very lost. Lost for words, for thoughts, for whatever someone can possibly be lost for. He has no clue where he is, _when_ he is and how this could’ve happened.

“What time is it?” he asks her, laying his hands on her shoulders.

She glares at his gloved hands before taking a couple of steps back, away from him; almost as if she is disgusted by him. She acts as if she’s looking at a mad man, especially when she gestures at the church bell right beside them and states that it’s almost two o’clock. She even suggests to get him to a place to eat and drink something, because he looks “pretty pale” to her.

He rolls his eyes at her and repeats his question in a different manner. “What _year_?”

“Uh—“ The woman grimaces before answering, “Two thousand twenty, last time I checked.”

“No, no, no.” Sebastian starts pacing up and down the road, shaking his head. He furiously glares at the woman before shaking his head. “That cannot be anywhere near right, you must be joking, lady.”

She frowns at him, putting down her grocery bags just to pull some strange device out of her pocket. “No, sir, I am not. Look—“ She tilts it towards Sebastian, but there’s no way he can see what’s on it with that bright light that comes out of it; it’s hurting his eyes so much that he has to look away.

“—it’s August twentieth, in the year two thousand twenty.”

Sebastian gapes at her; there is no single way that this can be right. Sebastian has dealt with great changes through the thousands of years that he’s been alive, but he’s never gone to sleep in the nineteenth century and woke up in the twenty-first. That’s over a hundred years, which is absurd.

Never in his life has Sebastian felt anxious about something, but right now even he’s suffering from a bad case of restlessness keeping him from thinking clearly.

“How are you feeling?” the woman asks Sebastian, to which he immediately snaps back that he’s been better. He doesn’t tell her about the whole being from another time, because they’ll lock him up in an asylum for sure, but he does admit that he doesn’t quite know where he is anymore.

“Well, you’re in London,” she tells him, before, after a quite a long silence, she tells him she’s worried about him. “I think the hot weather may be getting to you.” She seems to hesitate before telling Sebastian her house is pretty nearby. “So what do you say? Want to come inside for a while, eat something and drink some water? I’m sure you’ll feel better afterwards.”

She may be right, the world has gotten a lot hotter since last time Sebastian took a step outside. It feels like the sun is slowly burning through his skin even though it normally tolerates it with ease. So instead of declining, Sebastian takes a deep breath and nods; it’s probably not going to help, and he doesn’t really need food or water to survive, but he could do without this burning sun for a while.

Maybe if he’s inside, he can think calmly and find with a reason for why he’s here in the first place.

“In that case—“ She picks up her grocery bags, which seem to be way too much for one woman to feast upon. “—follow me.”

Sebastian does as he’s told.

As they wander through the mostly empty streets of London, the woman asks him a few questions, introduces herself to him too – calling herself Agnes. And, just like she said, not long after they start walking they arrive at a humongous mansion that this Agnes calls home.

“You live _here_?” Sebastian asks, looking at the building that looks almost like a small church. He feels like he shouldn’t go inside, it all appears too religious for a demon to be allowed to enter.

Agnes glances at him and giggles. “Well, yeah, but not alone.” She fiddles with the key, trying to fit it into the way-too-modern-looking keyhole. “I live here with a group ten kids.”

That’s when Sebastian sees the sign on the door, saying _“Miss Agnes’ orphanage”_ in swirly writing. It looks like something Sebastian seen back when he cared for the lord in the nineteenth century.

“I know, I’m pretty old-fashioned for doing it in a church and all.” Agnes pushes the door open and an extremely futuristic household unfolds in front of Sebastian’s eyes; just when he’s starting to feel at home in this strange century, this Agnes has to do _this_ to him.

“But I want the kids to lead a normal life,” she tells Sebastian while wandering inside. “Anyway, come inside, mister Michaelis.”

Sebastian saunters inside, his mind blown by the disgusting bright red of the couches that clashes with the wooden floor and the purple carpet. Not to even speak about the odd devices that can be found everywhere you look, and each one is displaying smoothly moving images in bright colours. But the children, even though seated in front of one of the flat screens, aren’t even looking at it.

That’s when Sebastian sees something, in the corner of his eye. There’s one child that’s different from the rest, or so it appears; smaller and skinnier, sitting far away from the group, huddled up with his feet pressed against his chest on the kitchen table-chair in the shadows that the walls cast.

Sebastian feels a strong bond, an odd feeling, as if he’s supposed to serve this child he doesn’t know.

“Uh- Mister Michaelis?” Agnes asks when she seems to notice that Sebastian has stopped following her around like a good old dog. “The kitchen is he—“ She pauses, her gaze following Sebastian’s towards the ten-year-old sitting in the shadows. “Ah, I see you’ve spotted Cassiel.”

Sebastian glances at her. “Cassiel? As in the angel?” He almost feels disgusted, but it’s like he cannot possibly dislike this child, because of strong bond that’s making him so confused.

“Yes, he was crying so hard when we found him.” Agnes smiles sadly. “He’d been living on the streets for so long that he didn’t even have a name to be called, the poor lad, so I decided to name him after the angel of tears. Our little Cassiel.”

Sebastian grimaces, trying to see the child better; for some reason he feels like he should fill out the blanks. He needs to know why some kind of awful faith led him here. Fortunately, Agnes helps him out a little by leading Sebastian towards the kitchen table where the scrawny child’s sitting with a book.

As they get closer, Sebastian can see more of the ten-year-old. The greyish blue bangs, the one big blue eye and the other that’s hiding underneath a medical eye patch. Even the way that the child looks up, slightly bothered by Sebastian’s presence, Sebastian seems to recognize it all.

That brat; Ciel Phantomhive.

That who this ten-year-old reminds him of. This orphan is the spitting image of Sebastian’s deceased master. But that’s not what bothers him; they look too alike for this to be a coincidence.

“I see you’re reading again, Cassiel,” Agnes asks the child, even though the picture book is in no way suited for a ten-year-old. “You’re working so hard on your vocabulary! I’m proud of you, kid.”

The child looks up at Agnes, nodding once, before glancing at Sebastian with emotionless eyes.

“Who is he?” he asks in a voice that sounds identical to the young master’s.

“He’s our guest,” Agnes explains. “About that, could you keep mister Michaelis some company while I empty these bags; my groceries are already cooking themselves with this hot weather.”

He glares at Sebastian coldly, sending shivers down the demon’s spine, before nodding.

Agnes smiles and tousles the child’s hair before disappearing to the kitchen.

The child stares at Sebastian from his seat, slowly closing the picture book before mumbling, “Sit.”

_How dares he to order around me like I’m a dog?_ Sebastian thinks to himself, intensely glaring down onto the ten-year-old. _That brat._

Sebastian wants to remain standing, because he doesn’t plan to listen to the orders that this child is barking at him. But it’s like a force within him causes Sebastian’s body to move on its own. So, even though his mind says “no” he knows the child was ordering him to deep down, and he faithfully sits down on one of the chairs on the other side of the table.

That’s when it hits him, a thought so absurd that Sebastian hadn’t even considered it to be possible.

This isn’t just a child that looks like his young master; this _is_ Ciel Phantomhive.

Sebastian feels sick all of a sudden, dizzy like the world is spinning around his head way too quickly. He made a grand mistake, obviously, he promised Ciel to always stay beside him. Even though he never said it that way, not in those words, Ciel must’ve meant _always_ ; even after death.

That must have been why Sebastian went into hibernation as soon as the “old” Ciel’s heart stopped beating. He promised to stay beside him, watch over the young master closely.

It all makes sense now; it must’ve taken a while for Ciel reincarnate, since everyone he knew back when he was still living his previous life should be deceased. And because of their deal Sebastian’s here now too, since it’s past the date that Ciel and Sebastian first met; his reincarnated-self is ten.

Sebastian looks up at the child, the young master; the same person, just living another life.

“Y-young master,” Sebastian whispers, his voice all shaky from seeing someone who he literally watched dying. He heard the young master’s heart stop, he saw him as a corpse, and he felt the loss and grief that no demon has ever felt before. “Y-you’re back.”

The child frowns at Sebastian and mumbles, “What are you saying?” in the annoyed tone that’s too familiar to Sebastian. It’s triggering all the memories that Sebastian made at the Phantomhive estate.

“You summoned me here.” Sebastian closes his eyes briefly. “So, what can I do for you, my lord?”

The child squints before asking, “Young master? My lord? I’m back?” He shakes his head. “What are you talking about? We don’t even know each other.”

“But Ciel.” Sebastian scoffs, sounding more nervous than intended, especially when he says, “Don’t act so absurd! Obviously you do know me, I served you for over seven years, young master.”

“Ciel?” The child shakes his head. “I’m not Ciel; I’m Cassiel.”

“Cassiel, Ciel. They’re practically the exact same name.” Sebastian could murder this brat right now; correcting him on such a small detail. “The point that I’m trying to make is that you- you—“ Even Sebastian lost track of what he’s supposed to do and why he’s here.

He takes a deep breath and tries to find a reason. If this new Ciel – or Cassiel, whatever he wants to be called – doesn’t even remember the deal, his past or Sebastian, what is Sebastian doing here? Is it just to make him suffer; make him watch the young master live another life without even remembering the things he and Sebastian did together. This endless torture, is that what the young master wanted for Sebastian, even after Ciel died? What a brutal idea of a joke is that?

“Who is this Ciel?” the orphaned child asks Sebastian. As if just having to watch the spitting image of his young master with no memories wasn’t bad enough, he now has to also make small talk with _it_?

“Ugh.” Sebastian closes his eyes briefly, reminding himself that it’s still the young master he’s talking to and he still, deep down, is the butler; he should at least try to keep his act together. “Ciel Phantomhive, my young master, looked an awful lot like you.” Sebastian talks slow, so the slow-learning brat can understand him. “Some may even belief that you are his reincarnation.”

The child shows Sebastian a confused glare. “Reincar- what now?”

Sebastian sighs, this new Ciel is even more dumb than the old one. “Reincarnation could be described as someone’s second life. Long after the young master passed away, you were born, looking and acting identical to him.”

“How old _are_ you?” The brat chuckles mocking me.

_Is it making fun of me?_ Sebastian asks himself before replying, “That is none of your business.” sounding more annoyed than he actually is, because deep down he missed the young master.

“I see the two of you are getting along,” Agnes states when she arrives at the table with two slices of chocolate cake and, for both Sebastian and the young master, a cup of tea.

_Appears he still has the same sweet tooth and a strong liking towards tea_. Sebastian notes when he sees the pleased look in the child’s eye as soon as Agnes puts the food on the table.

She also asks Sebastian if he’d doing better now that he’s inside, and when he says “quite” she looks relieved. Not long after that Agnes says that Sebastian can stay a little longer if he wants to. Soon after the busy woman disappears back to another room with a couple of the younger children.

“Tell me more about this Ciel.” The new young master takes a bite of his piece of cake; he’s not even using his fork when eating. Who on earth taught this child these appalling manners?

“Naturally,” Sebastian answers. “The young master was the head of an entire household, even though he was only just a young child like you are now. He summoned me, and as a butler, I obeyed every single one of his orders.” Sebastian pauses, thinking about the last order the young master gave him. “All the way to the last one. It’s why I am here at this moment.”

The new master looks up Sebastian, asking Sebastian about the last order he was given.

“His last request was for me to stay with him,” Sebastian explains, looking at the confused new young master with a strange feeling of pity. “Or rather, to stay with _you_.”

With a gaping mouth the child looks at him, and Sebastian feels like he broke the brat’s mind. Only then the child speaks, muttering, “I dreamt something like that.” He pauses, glaring into Sebastian’s eyes. “A couple of days back, I had a dream that I was dying. W-was that—“

“Your previous life?” Sebastian nods. “That is quite possible, my lord.”

The new young master closes his eyes and places his hands over his eyes. “T-this can’t- no.” When he looks up at Sebastian, he looks even more like the young master and whispers, “ _You_ are Sebastian? That demon who keeps haunting me in my dreams?”

Sebastian nods, making a bow with his head. “Sebastian Michaelis at your service, my lord.”

“Sebastian, I realize now; the strange dreams I have are real,” the young master says. His eye look determined when he looks into Sebastian’s and he says, “I want to continue where we left off.”

A small smile appears on his face when he realizes that his young master is back again.

“But first—“ The young master closes his eyes briefly. “—get me out of this place.”

Sebastian smirks. “That sounds an awful lot like a request, young master.”

“Get me out of this damned place.” Ciel’s hand goes up to the eye patch and after tearing it off he shouts, “That’s an order, Sebastian!”

“Yes, my lord.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey There!
> 
> After watching the last Black Butler movie yesterday evening, I wanted to write a Black Butler fanfiction to badly. That's why, today, I wrote this short fanfiction for my older sister, since she thought it would be a fun idea and I thought so too!  
> I really tried my best to keep this in character as much as possible. Especially because writing the dialogue for Sebastian is so much fun! I don't know, I just really like writing the dramatically long sentences Sebastian tends to use, so I hope I did a good job ^^
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this fanfiction!
> 
> Love, Noa <3


End file.
